


the war is over and we are beginning

by nevernevergirl



Category: Runaways (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Getting Back Together, Implied/Referenced Character Death, it's just the parents though the kids are fine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-17
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2020-06-30 06:42:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19847677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nevernevergirl/pseuds/nevernevergirl
Summary: The world does, in fact, end with a bang.gert/chase, a slew of dead parents, an averted apocalypse, and moving forward together.





	the war is over and we are beginning

**Author's Note:**

> takes place in a vague post s3ish future, am 100000% handwaving actual alien plot details here for the sake of a good getting together scene, i just wanted to cry. title from in our bedroom after the war by stars.

The world does, in fact, end with a bang. Arguably, it’s even a big one, given that a bunch of rogue, imperialistic alien monarches were doing their damndest to remake the Earth in their own sadistic image.

They don’t succeed, but there are explosions anyway: a literal one that engulfs their parents whole in a gruesome horror movie finale that’ll haunt their nightmares for years to come, and a metaphorical one that rocks both their old and new normals clean out of existence. The bang happens, and the whimpers come after.

The record player still works.

It shouldn’t. Gert thinks it’s maybe as old as the house, old enough to have been bought the first time record players were in fashion. She’d found it tucked behind three boxes of moldy novels when she’d been cleaning the room as a (poor) coping mechanism for her unmedicated anxiety, and she’d made Chase look to see if they could salvage it because their old lives had been fresh enough that she’d still had her sentimentality in tact. Because even then she’d been falling in love, probably. Because she’d always been inexplicably drawn to old, romantic things, loved their juxtaposition to the world they were born in. Because she’d still had enough energy to yearn for the soft and the lovely.

All Chase had needed to do was reattach the needle, and it played, good as new. She can still remember the way he’d grinned, and the way she’d kissed him after, short and sweet with her cheeks blazing hot when she’d pulled away because it’d still been new.

Gert doesn’t have anything new or unbroken left.

She goes up to her room still dusted with ash and still smelling the smoke in her hair and the blood on her skin. The others had scattered throughout the house as soon as they’d gotten back, stumbling out of the Rolls in silence. She wonders how long it’ll take for them to be able to look at each other again.

The record player is on her desk, where it’s been since the day Chase fixed it. There’s a stack of records next to it, and most of them are garbage, discards salvaged from 50 cent bins at yard sales. There’s a few old gems in there, though.

She puts on Etta James, and she looks up toward the cracked plaster on the ceiling, and she takes a deep breath.

Etta gets halfway through the first verse of At Last before there’s a soft rap against the door frame. She knows it’s Chase before she turns, because this was his room once, because no one else would have knocked, because she knows him like she knows how to breathe—instinctive and easy when it’s good, hard but desperately necessary when it’s bad.

She looks at him, and she nods, and he walks in.

“My mom loved this song,” he murmurs.

“I can put something else on,” she says, because Chase’s mom has been dead longer than the rest of their parents, and his feelings on the subject are worn and lived in but wholly unpredictable—she’s seen him cry and she’s watched him break things and she’s listened to him tell old stories with the kind of longing that felt like a warning sign. Navigating it together had been good for them, as morbid as it felt to admit it, but she didn’t have the energy right now.

“No,” he says, and he shakes his head, and he holds out a hand.

She doesn’t think before she takes it.

He pulls her close, gently, like he had at his bar mitzvah and then again at her bat mitzvah seven months later, and like he had at the dance the night they ran away the first time. He settles his hands on her waist and she circles her arms around his neck. She rests her head against his chest, and they’re swaying softly to _i found a thrill to press my cheek to_ , and suddenly it’s not like those other times at all. She feels one thousand years old. She feels like a child.

She’s dancing with a boy who broke her heart in a ruined mansion. She’s dancing with a boy she loves to an old love song on an old record player. She’s dancing with a boy and their parents are dead and they have to talk to the cops tomorrow and try to make sense of a future they weren’t sure would exist five hours ago.

Etta says: _you smiled oh you smiled and then the spell was cast_ and Chase shudders a little, and she realizes he’s crying. Then she realizes she’s crying too; she’s been crying, and she didn’t notice until now, even though her glasses are fogging up.

“Chase,” she says, snaking an arm down, fumbling for his hand.

He laces their fingers together and says “I know.”

She keeps crying, and so does he, and they sway just slightly off the beat as the record finishes: _for you are mine at last_.


End file.
